Rick Casey: DeLay's guilty verdict a comment on politics

Commentary

Published 6:30 am, Monday, November 29, 2010

Justice partnered with farce and pathos last week when a jury, after 19 hours of earnest deliberation, found Tom DeLay guilty of felony money laundering.

When DeLay was indicted a little more than five years ago, he was one of the most powerful men in the world.

Now DeLay is a fading symbol of the excesses of power, more famous for his game but embarrassing performance on Dancing with the Star(let)s than for his former role as Chief Enforcer of the Republican power structure, a man so powerful and ruthless that he could require large lobbying firms to purge themselves of Democratic partners.

DeLay responded to the jury's verdict by arguing, farcically and pathetically, that he was an innocent victim of forces so big that they threaten the Republic.

"The criminalization of politics undermines our very system, and I'm very disappointed in the outcome," he said.

Politics has been criminalized, but it's not exactly a recent phenomenon and he is not exactly a victim.

Mark Twain remarked on it five score and 13 years ago in Following the Equator.

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures," Twain wrote, "that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."

Twain and the jury put the blame for the criminalization of politics where it belongs: on the political leaders who sell their favors.

Politicians do their best to skirt what few anti-corruption laws they or their predecessors have passed in response to the public pressure that occasionally erupts in response to history's perpetual parade of political scandals. There are plenty of generous loopholes through which they can find cover.

Texas has only two simple strictures on the marketplace of buying politicians.

The first is that while there is no limit to how much a patron can give to the politician, it must be a public transaction.

The second is that corporations and unions can't directly give money to candidates.

These are not exactly onerous restrictions. Texas politicians, both Republican and Democrat, have received contributions of more than $1 million from individuals with obvious interests, putting ordinary citizens at a crippling disadvantage in influencing our government.

An inconvenience

Yet DeLay considered these bedrock rules to be a mere inconvenience, showing the same spirit that famously inspired his response to being told at the height of his power that he couldn't smoke in a Washington restaurant because of federal law.

"I am the federal government," he said.

So he used his position as majority leader to rake in big bucks from corporations all over the country who wanted his help on federal bills.

The money was targeted to candidates who agreed to support Rep. Tom Craddick to become the first Republican speaker of the Texas House. Craddick, in turn, committed to DeLay's plan of re-drawing the state's congressional districts to design more of them for Republicans — just two years after their normal once-a-decade redrawing.

It changed Austin

It worked, but one by-product may constitute DeLay's most serious crime.

The bitter process moved the Legislature a large step toward making Austin as destructively hyper-partisan as Washington. (Some House Republicans were so offended by this horror that last year they broke ranks and joined Democrats in electing Rep. Joe Straus to replace Craddick, based on his promise to return civility to the Capitol, a promise he has kept.)

One of the more amusing moments of DeLay's trial, to me, came when the jurors during deliberations sent a note to the judge asking if it was illegal to ignore the purpose for which donors gave money.

It's not as though the companies that gave DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority PAC wanted it used for polio research and he was spending it on private school scholarships.

When Westar Energy Inc. of Topeka, Kan., gave $25,000, its interest was laid out in an e-mail from its lobbyist to a company executive: "(DeLay's) agreement is necessary before the House conferees can push the language we have in place in the House bill."

Voted with empathy

The donors didn't care what DeLay did with their money. They just cared what he did for them.

Another amusing moment came when DeLay told reporters while the jury was out that he was comfortable with the panel's makeup of a Republican, six Democrats, two independent conservatives and three independent liberals, including a Greenpeace activist as forewoman.

DeLay said he was putting his faith of acquittal with the liberals because they were more empathetic, reported my colleague R.G. Ratcliffe.

"I know them like they're my brothers and sisters," DeLay said.

DeLay's former Republican colleagues didn't want empathy in a Supreme Court justice. But when you're the defendant, empathy in the justice system doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

The jurors haven't spoken publicly yet, but I believe they voted their empathy - empathy for those who would like to have a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

And who don't agree with the U.S. Supreme Court that corporations are people.

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